...and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations,

Thomas Jefferson et al. -- The Declaration of Independence

That means, "If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be disavowed."

Edward E. Hale -- The Man Without a Country

And that is that your refusal to admit responsibility in the death of Bobby Weed is the same as that of those Germans who disavowed the Nazi party even as they watched blandly and unprotestingly as the thugs vandalized the synagogues and perpetrated the Kristallnacht.

The chief expected us to disavow any such absurdities before he could endorse our church.

Barbara Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible

Now that they wereshaheed, packing up and running was an even worse affront, a betrayal, a disavowal of the sacrifice her sons had made.

Khaled Hosseini -- A Thousand Splendid Suns

He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity.

Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace

"If you insist on disavowing that which is ugly about what you do," said Magnus, still looking at Alec, "you will never learn from your mistakes."

Cassandra Clare -- City of Bones

The general, putting his hand on his sword, exclaimed,—"If you talk of honor, do not begin by disavowing its laws, and impose nothing by violence."

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo

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He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

He proved good as his word when a rawboned major from Minnesota curled his lip in rebellious disavowal and demanded his share of the syndicate Milo kept saying everybody owned.

Joseph Heller -- Catch-22

Pyotr Petrovitch had the good sense to accept the disavowal.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- Crime and Punishment

The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on— When I chose to hide my love for you, to disavow it in public and live it as a lie, I made it public property-and the public has claimed it in a fitting sort of manner.

Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged

If you can grasp the situation and action rendered by the Greek poem, even/ line of it, and by the living performer that it demands, and if you will not betray Homer with prose or poor verse, you may hope to make an equivalent that he himself would not disavow.

Homer -- The Odyssey

But the good-natured self-forgetful cheeriness and common-sense of Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one suspicion; and the modest calm of Nancy’s speech and manners told clearly of a mind free from all disavowed devices.

George Eliot -- Silas Marner

Armand, whose connection with the Scarlet Pimpernel and disavowal of the brutal policy of the Reign of Terror was still unknown to his countryman, had left England a little more than a week ago, carrying with him the necessary instructions, which would enable him to meet the other fugitives and to convey them to this place of safety.

Baroness Orczy -- The Scarlet Pimpernel

While I agreed, I could not accept that we should therefore disavow studying.

Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom

I was so hurt and humiliated that I disavowed all relations with Young.

Richard Wright -- Black Boy

The actions themselves were disavowed, buried to be more accurate.

Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy

He was inconsistent: first he disavowed his infidelities, then he tried to justify them.

Milan Kundera -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being

They had had more reason than most sisters to disavow their relationship, yet they had been fiercely loyal, had remained irrevocably bound to each other by grudges, debt, and love.

Amy Tan -- The Bonesetter’s Daughter

But Father Paissy, frowning again, begged all of them, at least for a time, not to speak of the matter "till it be more fully confirmed, seeing there is so much credulity among those of this world, and indeed this might well have chanced naturally," he added, prudently, as it were to satisfy his conscience, though scarcely believing his own disavowal, a fact his listeners very clearly perceived.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov

Not that they claim to be on precisely the same footing as the high folks of Belgrave Square and Grosvenor Place, but that they stand, with reference to them, rather in the light of those illegitimate children of the great who are content to boast of their connections, although their connections disavow them.

Charles Dickens -- Nicholas Nickleby

…at any time advance: and if they find it contrary to that Rule, to doe as they did, that came to Moses, and complained that there were some that Prophecyed in the Campe, whose Authority so to doe they doubted of; and leave to the Soveraign, as they did to Moses to uphold, or to forbid them, as hee should see cause; and if hee disavow them, then no more to obey their voice; or if he approve them, then to obey them, as men to whom God hath given a part of the Spirit of their Soveraigne.

Thomas Hobbes -- Leviathan

He was dressed in the loose-fitting, heterogeneous garments in which the English traveller in foreign lands is wont to consult his comfort and affirm his nationality; and with his pleasant steady eyes, his bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its seasoning, his manly figure, his minimising manner and his general air of being a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a representative of the British race as need not in any clime have been disavowed by those who have a kindness for it.

Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volumes 1 & 2

She seemed relieved, though, at my disavowal of whatever it was I was disavowing.

Roger Zelazny -- Nine Princes in Amber

You maintain Rowan’s innocence and disavow these criminals, and yet here they reside.

Henry H. Neff -- The Maelstrom

Point is, my father’s theory is not as comforting as it used to be, not that I disavow it.

John Gardner -- The Sunlight Dialogues

Both the Director and Rowan’s executive council disavow all knowledge of his plans or actions.

Henry H. Neff -- The Second Siege

At first, the company disavowed responsibility for these plants, which it claimed were owned by independent suppliers.

Eric Schlosser -- Fast Food Nation

All the architects, including Sullivan, seemed to have been captured by the same spell, although Sullivan later would disavow the moment.

Erik Larson -- The Devil in the White City

Secondly, Because it exhibits a body of men, numbers of whom disavow the publishing political testimonies, as being concerned therein and approvers thereof.

Thomas Paine -- Common Sense

There is really only one question that I want answered, and it probably won’t even hurt your employer or employers, who will doubtless disavow any knowledge of you.

Roger Zelazny -- My Name is Legion

A disavowal of Hobart’s policies combined with an expression of regret over the rape and the killings with handsome cash settlements to the victims’ survivors.

Robert A. Heinlein -- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

That very same day, President Kennedy attempted to disavow any American involvement in an invasion, explaining, "There will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by United States forces."

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

By acknowledging the real authority of these secondary communities (and it was impossible to deprive them of it), they disavowed beforehand the habitual use of constraint in enforcing g the decisions of the majority.

Alexis de Toqueville -- Democracy In America, Volume 1

Mr Plornish, with a modest disavowal of his merits, opened the room door for her readmission, and followed her in with such an exceedingly bald pretence of not having been out at all, that her father might have observed it without being very suspicious.

Charles Dickens -- Little Dorrit

For festering sores were not only conspicuous reminders of the body’s sunken state, but also, in reflecting the venomous corruption of the soul, they awakened a desire for edifying spiritual compensation; whereas the bloom of health was a deceptive phenomenon, an offense to the conscience that it was best to disavow by bowing low in profound humility before human frailty.

Thomas Mann -- The Magic Mountain

He was dressed in the loose-fitting, heterogeneous garments in which the English traveller in foreign lands is wont to consult his comfort and affirm his nationality; and with his pleasant steady eyes, his bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its seasoning, his manly figure, his minimising manner and his general air of being a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a representative of the British race as need not in any clime have been disavowed by those who have a kindness for it.

Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1

Ambitious Turnus in the press appears, And, aggravating crimes, augments their fears; Proclaims his private injuries aloud, A solemn promise made, and disavow’d; A foreign son is sought, and a mix’d mungril brood.

Virgil -- The Aeneid

She seemed relieved, though, at my disavowal of whatever it was I was disavowing.

Roger Zelazny -- Nine Princes in Amber

The witches suspect that Rowan has attempted a clever ruse and is using a disavowed Agent to take custody of these children.

Henry H. Neff -- The Second Siege

I saw plainly how you would look; and heard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either a purse or a coronet.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

While many of my comrades thought we should disavow those leaders, my inclination was to reach out to them.

Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom

I had disavowed nothing.

Richard Wright -- Black Boy

Sincerely wishing, that as men and christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right; and be, in your turn, the means of securing it to others; but that the example which ye have unwisely set, of mingling religion with politics, MAY BE DISAVOWED AND REPROBATED BY EVERY INHABITANT OF _AMERICA.